Murad's Translation uniquely takes the Arabic back to its origins (#15)

To obtain Saint Murad's FREE Quran translation sample, click here: https://buymeacoffee.com/saintmurad/e...

We now end this video series with St. Murad by comparing his translation of the Qur'an with two other Qur'an translations from friends of ours...Robert Spencer's "The Critical Qur'an", and Usama Dakdok's "The Generous Qur'an".

You can get Spencer's 'The Critical Qur'an' here: https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Quran...

You can get Usama Dakdok's 'The Generous Qur'an' here: https://www.amazon.com/Generous-Accur...

St Murad points out that the difference between his new Qur'anic translation and those of everyone else's, including Spencer and Dakdok, is that they all assume that the Qur'an came from the lips of the prophet Muhammad. Therefore, to best understand the Qur'an is saying the words and phrases within the texts should be informed by the contexts of the much later Islamic Traditions. In other words, they let the those later traditions (what he calls the Standard Islamic Narrative) tell them what the Arabic words in the Qur'an should mean.

Murad, however, doesn't do that, but begins from the premise that the prophet Muhammad had nothing to do with the Qur'an, and therefore we should not interpose the later Islamic Traditions on to the Qur'an, but let the Arabic from that time period speak for itself.

Thus, Murad looks at the Arabic from the context of the 7th century itself, and takes those more primitive meanings to come to his translations. When he does that you will find a much different reading of the Qu'ran from that which modern Muslim translators have given us.

Surah 29:8 is a good example. Here the word "Jihad", which parents should do to errant children, is translated by Spencer as "holy War" (Dakdok) and "struggle" (Spencer).

Yet, this word correctly translated in the Arabic of that time meant "exert" or "effort", which makes much more sense when considering the response of a parent to their child.

We know that over time words change their meanings, so that the word "gay" today refers to someone who is a homosexual. But in the last century it simply meant to be joyful or happy.

In the same way Arabic words changed meanings over time, so that many of the words we find in modern translations took on the meanings which were imposed on them by the later Islamic Traditions.

To make his point stronger Murad introduced a whole list of words which are now in the English translation of the Qur'an which were never in the Qur'an in its original Arabic form, such as:

Revelation, Book, People of the Book, Send down, Unseen, Disbelievers, infidels, battle of Badr, Yathrib, wife, husband, pair, everlasting, abrogation, hell, hellfire, missiles, forbidden, trial, test, Good News, crucify, I seek refuge, lawful, unlawful, sedition, private parts, terror, booty, spoils of war, and fight.

These words were all introduced into the English translations with an agenda. In most cases they were introduced by the later translators in order to give authority for a viewpoint, or a theology, or even a story which are found in the later Islamic Traditions. Once they are also found in the Qur'an, that viewpoint or theology or even story is then given the authority the Muslims need.

So, if you need to add credibility to an idea or a theological concept or even a story just impose it onto an Arabic word or phrase which is similar, or looks the same, and VOILA you have the authority for it that you crave.

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics & Polemics - US, 2018
(113,570) Music: "Country Girl" by Aleksound from filmmusic-io